Buying a Property in Italy Made Simple with Expert Currency Transfers

In an account in your name.

Funds sit in client accounts with FCA-authorised institutions, and the payments themselves are arranged through FCA-authorised partners. The money moves through the normal international banking routes and is funded into the destination account at the other end.

It never sits in a Lucid account. It leaves as yours and it arrives as yours. Ask anyone else you are considering whether they can say the same, because the answer is often no.

An account to trade through, and documentation covering two questions. Where the money came from, and why it is moving.

For the first, a UK bank statement usually does it. For the second, a letter from your solicitor or the purchase contract. The principle is simply that money crossing a border needs an explanation attached to it, and the better organised you are at the start, the less friction there is later.

You do not need an Italian bank account. We can pay your lawyer or notary directly.

Same day is normal once you are set up and verified, subject to the daily cut-off. SEPA payments run on a slightly different timetable, usually 24 to 48 hours.

The delay people actually experience is at the front end rather than the payment end. Account opening and compliance checks take as long as they take, and they take longer if the paperwork arrives in pieces. If you know roughly when you are completing, start that process early.

It varies, and it varies more than most buyers expect.

A deposit goes first to secure the property. On a new build, stage payments follow at intervals set by the developer. On a resale there is usually just the balance.

The question we would ask you is not how many payments, it is when you want to fix the cost of them. You can convert the full amount at once, or move it in tranches so you are not exposed to a single day’s rate. Neither is automatically right, and it depends on how much certainty you want.

Yes, with a forward contract. You fix today’s rate for a date up to twelve months ahead, put down a deposit, and settle the rest when the money is needed.

The effect is that the euro price of your property stops moving. You know what it costs in sterling from the moment you book it.

There is more detail on our forward contracts page.

When you would rather know the number than gamble on a better one.

Short gaps between exchange and completion usually do not justify it. The market can only move so far in a fortnight. Long gaps do, particularly where you have budgeted carefully and a swing against you would actually hurt.

The important part is the timing of the booking. Do not book one until the purchase is certain. If you commit to a forward and the sale collapses, the contract still stands and you still have to settle it. We would rather talk you out of booking too early than take the trade.

Our margin is in the exchange rate. No transfer fees, no account fees, nothing else to pay. What you are quoted is what you get.

In practice that tends to be somewhere between a quarter and a third of what a bank would charge on the same transfer.

Price is not the whole argument though. For small everyday transfers an app will serve you perfectly well. The reason people use us is that when you are moving a large sum against a deadline, you want a person who knows your file and answers the phone.

Yes. The process runs the same way, just in the other direction.

We can collect euros in Europe and bring the funds back to your UK account, with the same checks and the same handling as a purchase.

Speak to us before completion rather than after. There is a lot more we can do with the timing while the money is still in front of you.